From one of the great experiential consulting design firms - who says work can’t be fun?

IDEO Global Chain Reaction from IDEO Labs on Vimeo.

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What makes people choose to be in certain communities; choose to engage, or choose to activate or become buyers or consumers is in my opinion based on psychographic elements that are keys to growing audiences beyond the bucketed core demographic of say 18-34 year olds with a cross reference to a marketers product - say for example car buyers.  Understanding target customers’ attitudes and behaviors towards social media platforms,and most importantly their relationships with and through those platforms is critical to achieving marketing success through social media. What you hope to achieve, how you get there and what strategy you use to build engagement and conversion goes way beyond how that community engages with a single technology or single social media channel.

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I ahve read a number of articles recently in MSM such as WSJ, NY Times, AdAge and at conferences and on the web regarding measurement by publishers and vendors. And with no set standards and varied ways of measuring as all and sundry keep pointing out, changes are happening and there is more to come.It is inconceivable that in this day and age there are no standard metrics online - a medium that ostensibly does leave a footprint for tracking. It is hard to understand how a vendor and a publisher can have vastly different numbers when calculating (and in some cases simply adding) online activity such as clickthroughs.

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Do you ever wake up and feel that you were just a little off center? Maybe the glass is 30% full or it is a 30% day? Not sure why? - Coming down with a cold? Bad night’s sleep or lack of sleep catching up? Or a mountain of to do’s? Just not at your best but you have that big meeting and you have to deliver?

You still have to deliver and you need to be there for your colleagues and clients. Tiger Woods won the Masters without his “A” Game - can you win without your A-game?

Many sports psychologists say you should play with the “game” that shows up with you on the day. If you arrive at the tennis court and your topspin backhand does not arrive with you, or you arrive at the golf course and all you brought is a hard fade - dig deep and play with what came with you - you will have better results than fighting through the early part of your game and getting behind the eight ball.

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Preparation, practice and lessons learned from sport that we can use to win in business

Gary Player the South African golfer says: “The more I practice, the luckier I get.” Just look at his record. He has also said that winning is a habit and that success breads success. Related to business, preparation is as important or more important than presentation. To understand what it takes to win, one has to understand oneself, and then know as much or more about the audience and potential clients than they do themselves.

Whether coaching, captaining managing or playing on teams in sport or the workplace, sharing credit and giving credit where credit is due is beyond critical from a motivation standpoint. People want to learn and they want to be motivated, connected, recognized and rewarded. If you play sport, think how often you raise your game when you are around better players or how you push yourself to keep up when you are around thought leaders or smart people either socially or at work  (some people just run for the hills ).

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